Confidential government papers declassified for the first time reveal the former Conservative Prime Minister’s attitude to the brutal Iraqi dictator and the Gulf War.

A letter addressed to a Foreign Office diplomat on August 19, 1990 describes a telephone conversation between Mrs Thatcher and the then Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd.

In the letter – titled “Iraq” and dated 17 days after the war broke out – Downing Street’s Private Secretary outlines the “main points” discussed.

As almost one million Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait, the PM of 11 years discussed how she planned to approach the crisis.

Under the leadership of despot Saddam Hussein, Iraq occupied neighboring Kuwait on August 2, 1990, in a move widely condemned by the West.

Did Saddam REALLY have weapons of mass destruction? The UN's hunt for Iraq's arsenal

The case for the second Iraq war famously hinged on the claim that Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, and that he represented an immediate threat. After the war, inspectors found nothing. Did Saddam fool the intelligence community, or did they lie to the world to justify the war?

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The al-Qaim phosphate plant. Journalists were given a tour before the invasion to disprove US claims that it was being used as a chemical weapons plant